Muslim McCarthyism

Peter King's broad-brush indictment of the "Muslim community."

Thursday morning, the House Committee on Homeland Security will begin hearings on terrorism among American Muslims. The first hearing is titled "The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response." Critics accuse the committee's chairman, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), of implying that all Muslims are guilty of terrorism by association. But King denies casting blame loosely among American Muslims. Instead, he now casts blame loosely among American Muslim "leaders."

In December, after his election as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, King tried to clean up his language. "The great majority of Muslims in our country are hardworking, dedicated Americans," he conceded in a Newsday op-ed. Instead, he shifted his indiscriminate fire to Muslim "leaders." In terrorism cases, he wrote, "Federal and local law enforcement officials throughout the country told me they received little or—in most cases—no cooperation from Muslim leaders and imams." King used similarly broad language in a recent New York magazine piece, warning American Muslims that "their current leadership is not serving them well."

Monday on Fox News, King said his upcoming hearings would feature an American Muslim who "feels very strongly that the current Muslim leadership is not doing its job." A day later, King told the same network that when Muslims come forward to report suspicions of dangerous extremism, "they do not get the cooperation from the imams and from their leaders." He brushed off the North Carolina study, accusing its authors of "leaving out any number of terrorist financing cases which there was no support from the Muslim community on."

Through this phrase—the "Muslim community"—King has casually substituted unnamed Muslim "leaders" for Muslim citizens as representatives of American Islam. Yesterday on MSNBC, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post told King, "You have alleged that the Muslim American community has not been forthcoming in helping law enforcement officials deal with radicalization." King replied: "I talk to cops and counterterrorism people on the ground all the time, and they get virtually no cooperation." Robinson accused King of assuming "that the Muslim American community, a religious minority in this country, is somehow abetting and aiding and giving shelter to this process of radicalization, when that is clearly not the truth." King shot back: "It is the truth."

King says Thursday's hearing will address his "hypotheses" about extremism among American Muslims. That's a good way to judge the proceedings. Let's see whether he produces evidence that Muslim leaders in general are abetting radicalism, covering up for terrorists, or refusing to cooperate with law enforcement. If he doesn't, the hearings may illuminate something else: not "the extent of radicalization in the American Muslim community," but the extent to which the "Muslim community" has become a slur for tarring all Muslims with the sins of a few.